<p>A lecturer is not an adjunct. Completely different jobs.</p>
<p>There are important distinctions between tenured and nontenured positions, lecturer, adjunct, and assistant professor. Confusion on this point is making it difficult to follow the discussion. The fact that assistant professors teach courses has nothing to do with the proposal to bring in adjuncts. The fact that Harvard uses lecturers has nothing to do with adjuncts.</p>
<p>I think the likelihood of having a world famous scholar teaching your intro class depends on the college, the department, and the individual professor. Harvard has, at least in the past, liked to have some of its leading scholars teach intro courses, and the professors liked it as well. This seems to serve several purposes:</p>
<p>This is used as marketing for the department to attract prospective concentrators. The faculty knows the intellectual firepower of the undergrads and they are always looking to bring in people who are potential stars. Putting the faculty stars out there for students to see helps in this process. From the faculty point of view a future “star” is someone who will go on to be a scholar in the field, not simply someone who gets an A in the course. So the “teaching skills” of the faculty member are less important than her/his ability to convey the excitement of the scholarly work to the students. Of course if they are terrible teachers then they still serve to show undergrad commitment, but at the expense of a good intro experience.</p>
<p>Some top scholars like reviewing the basics of the field with new students. It is fun for them.</p>
<p>In some fields it also gives the faculty member interaction with a large number of relatively new graduate student teaching fellows, some of whom may come to work with the professor in their later research. Teaching a big course then lets the professor get to know these prospective students. </p>
<p>Many professors write introductory textbooks, and teaching the intro course is the way to prepare a book.</p>
<p>I had several professors in introductory courses who then held, or later were awarded, Nobel prizes. Some were very good lecturers, others were not. Teaching a course is not just about how good the lectures might be. It is a complicated process that includes setting the syllabus, setting clear and appropriate prerequisites, picking texts and other reading, designing assignments and tests, supervising the large crew of graduate students, resolving questions and conflicts, and making sure that the whole enterprise runs on time. In retrospect I realized that even some of the “bad teachers” I had were actually good managers of their courses, just not very good lecturers.</p>
<p>I agree that there is no particular benefit to the student to sitting in a 500 person lecture from a Nobelist vs an anonymous assistant professor. However, depending on the college, there is a good chance that it might happen.</p>
<p>On the other hand, someone who is not engaged in scholarly work at all, which describes most adjuncts, should not be teaching intro courses at a place like Harvard. Again, this is not just an introduction to the basic concepts of the field. It is an introduction to the scholarly life. You have to live it to teach it.</p>